The Witching Hour

  He made a sudden impatient motion for me to stop.

  "Look, I came here because of Deirdre," I said. "I came because she's going mad. The girl I spoke to in Texas is on the edge of breakdown."

  "Do you think you helped her?"

  "No, and I deeply regret that I didn't. If you don't want contact with us, I understand. Why the hell should you? But we can help Deirdre. We really can."

  No answer. He drank the sherry. I tried to see this from his point of view. I couldn't. I'd never tried to poison someone. I didn't have the faintest idea of who he really was. The man I'd known in the history wasn't this man.

  "Would your father, Julien, have spoken to me?" I asked.

  "Not a chance of it," he said, looking up as though awakening from his thoughts. For a moment he looked deeply distressed. "But don't you know from all your observations," he asked, "that he was one of them?" Again, he seemed completely earnest, his eyes searching my face as if to assure himself that I was earnest too.

  "And you're not one of them?" I asked.

  "No," he said with great quiet emphasis, slowly shaking his head. "Not really. Not ever!" He looked sad suddenly, and when he did he looked old. "Look, spy on us if you wish. Treat us as if we were a royal family ... "

  "Exactly."

  "You're historians, that's what my contacts in London tell me. Historians, scholars, utterly harmless, completely respectable ... "

  "I'm honored."

  "But leave my niece alone. My niece has a chance for happiness now. And this thing must come to an end, you see. It must. And perhaps she can see to it that it does."

  "Is she one of them?" I asked, echoing his early intonation.

  "Of course she isn't!" he said. "That's just the point! There is no one of them now! Don't you see that? What's been the theme of your study of us? Haven't you seen the disintegration of the power? Stella wasn't one of them either! The last one was Mary Beth. Julien--my father, that is--and then Mary Beth."

  "I've seen it. But what about your spectral friend? Will he allow it to come to a finish?"

  "You believe in him?" He cocked his head with a faint smile, his dark eyes creasing at the edges with silent laughter. "Really, now, Mr. Lightner? Do you believe in Lasher yourself?"

  "I saw him," I said simply.

  "Imagination, sir. My niece told me it was a very dark garden."

  "Oh, please. Have we come this far to say such things to each other? I saw him, Cortland. He smiled when I saw him. He made himself very substantial and vivid indeed."

  Cortland's smile became smaller, more ironic. He raised his eyebrows and gave a little sigh. "Oh, he would like your choice of words, Mr. Lightner."

  "Can Deirdre make him go away and leave her alone?"

  "Of course she can't. But she can ignore him. She can live her life as if he weren't there. Antha couldn't. Stella didn't want to. But Deirdre's stronger than Antha, and stronger than Stella too. Deirdre has a lot of Mary Beth in her. That's what the others often don't realize--" He appeared to catch himself suddenly in the act of saying more than he had ever intended to say.

  He stared at me for a long moment, and then he gathered up his cigarette case and his lighter and slowly rose to his feet.

  "Don't go yet," I said, imploringly.

  "Send me your history. Send it to me and I'll read it. And then maybe we can talk again. But don't ever approach my niece again, Mr. Lightner. Understand that I would do anything to protect her from those who mean to exploit her or hurt her. Anything at all!"

  He turned to go.

  "What about the drink?" I asked, rising. I gestured to the bourbon. "Suppose I call the police and I offer the contaminated drink in evidence?"

  "Mr. Lightner. This is New Orleans!" He smiled and winked at me in the most charming fashion. "Now please, go home to your watchtower and your telescope and gaze at us from afar!"

  I watched him leave. He walked gracefully with very long, easy steps. He glanced back when he reached the doorway and gave me a quick, agreeable wave of his hand.

  I sat down, ignoring the drugged bourbon, and wrote an account of the whole affair in my diary. I then took a small bottle of aspirin out of my pocket, emptied out the tablets, and poured some of the drugged bourbon into it, and capped it and put it away.

  I was about to collect my diary and pen and make for the stairs when I looked up and saw the bellhop standing in the lobby just beyond the door. He came forward. "Your bags are ready, Mr. Lightner. Your car is here." Bright, agreeable face. Nobody had told him he was personally throwing me out of town.

  "Is that so?" I said. "Well, and you packed everything?" I surveyed the two bags. My diary I had with me, of course. I went into the lobby. I could see a large old black limousine stopping up the narrow French Quarter street like a giant cork.

  "That's my car?"

  "Yes sir, Mr. Cortland said to see you made the ten o'clock flight to New York. Said he'd have someone meet you at the airport with the ticket. You ought to have plenty of time."

  "Isn't that thoughtful?" I fished into my pocket for a couple of bills, but the boy refused them.

  "Mr. Cortland's taken care of everything, sir. You'd better hurry. You don't want to miss your plane."

  "That's true. But I have a superstition about big black cars. Get me a taxi, and do take this for it, please."

  The taxi took me not to the airport but to the train. I managed to get a sleeper for St. Louis, and went on to New York from there. When I spoke to Scott he was adamant. This data required a reevaluation. Don't do any more research in New York. Come home.

  Halfway across the Atlantic, I became ill. By the time I reached London I was running a high fever. An ambulance was waiting to take me to hospital, and Scott was there to ride with me. I was going in and out of consciousness. "Look for poison," I said.

  Those were my last words for eight hours. When I finally came around, I was still feverish and uncomfortable, but much reassured to be alive and to discover Scott and two other good friends in the room.

  "You've been poisoned all right, but the worst is over. Can you remember your last drink before you boarded the plane?"

  "That woman," I said.

  "Tell me."

  "I was in the bar at the New York airport, had a Scotch and soda. She was stumbling alone with an impossible bag, then asked me if I'd fetch the skycap for her. She was coughing as if she were tubercular. Very unhealthy-looking creature. She sat at my table while I went for the skycap. Probably a hireling, off the streets."

  "She slipped you a poison called ricin; its from the castor bean. Very powerful, and extremely common. Same thing Cortland put in your bourbon. You're out of the woods, but you're going to be sick for two more days."

  "Good Lord." My stomach was cramping again.

  "They aren't ever going to talk to us, Aaron," Scott said. "How could they? They kill people. It's over. At least for now."

  "They always killed people, Scott," I said weakly. "But Deirdre Mayfair doesn't kill people. I want my diary." The cramps became unbearable. The doctor came in and started to prepare me for an injection. I refused.

  "Aaron, he's the head of toxicology here, impeccable reputation. We've checked out the nurses. Our people are here in the room."

  It was the end of the week before I could return to the Motherhouse. I could scarcely bring myself to take any nourishment. I was convinced the entire Motherhouse might soon be poisoned. What was to stop them from hiring people to put commonplace toxins in our food? The food might be poisoned before it even reached our kitchen.

  And though no such thing happened, it was a year before such thoughts left me, so shaken was I by what had occurred.

  A great deal of shocking news came to us from New Orleans during that year ...

  During my convalescence I reviewed the entire Mayfair history. I revised some of it, including the testimony of Richard Llewellyn, and a few other persons I'd seen before I went to Texas to see Deirdre.

  I concluded that Cor
tland had done away with Stuart, and probably with Cornell. It all made sense. Yet so many mysteries remained. What was Cortland protecting when he committed these crimes? And why was he engaged in constant battle with Carlotta?

  We had in the meantime heard from Carlotta Mayfair--a barrage of threatening legal letters from her law firm to ours in London, demanding that we "cease and desist" with our "invasion" of her privacy, that we make "full disclosure" of any personal information we had obtained about her and her family, "that we restrict ourselves to a safe distance of one hundred yards from any person in her family, and any piece of family property, and that we make no effort whatsoever to contact in any way shape or form, Deirdre Mayfair," et cetera, and so forth and so on ad nauseam, none of these legal threats or demands having the slightest validity.

  Our legal representatives were instructed to make no response.

  We discussed the matter with the full council.

  Once again, we had tried to make contact and we had been pushed back. We would continue to investigate, and for this purpose I might have a carte blanche, but no one was going near the family in the foreseeable future. "If ever again," Reynolds added with great emphasis.

  I did not argue. I could not drink a glass of milk at the time without wondering if I was going to die from it. And I could not get the memory of Cortland's artificial smile out of my mind.

  I doubled the number of investigators in New Orleans and in Texas. But I also warned these people, personally by phone, that the objects of their surveillance were hostile and potentially very dangerous. I gave each and every one of our investigators full opportunity to refuse the job.

  As it turned out, I lost no investigators whatsoever. But several raised their price.

  As for Juliette Milton, our socialite undercover gossip, we retired her with an unofficial pension, over her protests. We did everything we could to make her sensible that certain members of this family were capable of violence. Reluctantly, she stopped writing to us, pleading in her letter of December 10, 1958 to understand what she had done wrong. We were to hear from her again several times over the years, however. She is still living as of 1989, in an expensive boarding house for elderly people in Mobile, Alabama.

  DEIRDRE'S STORY CONTINUES

  My investigators in Texas were three highly professional detectives, two of whom had once worked for the United States government; and all three were cautioned that Deirdre was never to be disturbed or frightened by what we were doing in any way.

  "I am very concerned for this girl's happiness, and for her peace of mind. But understand, she is telepathic. If you come within fifty feet of her, she is likely to know you are watching her. Please take care."

  Whether they believed me or not, they followed my instructions. They kept a safe distance, gathering information about her through the school offices and from gossiping students, from old women who worked the desk in her dormitory, and from teachers who talked freely about her over coffee. If Deirdre ever knew she was being watched, we never found out.

  Deirdre did well in the fall semester at Texas Woman's University. She made excellent grades. The girls liked her. Her teachers liked her. About every six weeks or so she signed out of the dormitory for dinner with her cousin Rhonda Mayfair and Rhonda's husband, Professor Ellis Clement, who was Deirdre's English teacher at this time. There is also a record of one date on December 10 with a boy named Joey Dawson, but it lasted one hour if the register is to be believed.

  The same register indicates that Cortland visited Deirdre often, frequently signing her out for a Friday or Saturday night in Dallas from which she returned before the "Late Check In" time of one A.M.

  We know that Deirdre went home to Metairie to Cortland's house for Christmas, and family gossip declared that she would not even see Carlotta when Carlotta came to call.

  Legal gossip supports the idea that Carlotta and Cortland were still not speaking. Carlotta would not return Cortland's routine business calls. Acrimonious letters went back and forth between the two over the smallest financial matters concerning Deirdre.

  "He's trying to get complete control of her for her own sake," said one secretary to a friend, "but that old woman won't have it. She's threatening to take him to court."

  Whatever the particulars of that struggle, we know that Deirdre began to deteriorate during the spring term. She began to miss classes. Dorm mates said she cried all night sometimes, but would not answer their knocks on her door. One evening she was picked up by the campus police in a small downtown park, apparently confused as to where she was.

  Finally she was called to the dean's office for disciplinary action. She had missed too many classes. She was put on Compulsory Attendance, and though she did manage to appear in the classroom, teachers reported her as inattentive, and possibly ill.

  Finally in April, Deirdre began to suffer nausea every morning. Girls up and down the hallway could hear her struggling with her sickness in the communal washroom. The girls went to the dorm mother.

  "Nobody wanted to squeal on her. We were afraid. What if she tried to hurt herself?"

  When the dorm mother finally suggested she might be pregnant, Deirdre broke down sobbing, and had to be hospitalized until Cortland could come and get her, which he did on May 1.

  What happened afterwards has remained a mystery to this day. The records at the new Mercy Hospital in New Orleans indicate that Deirdre was probably taken there directly upon arrival from Texas, and that she was given a private room. Gossip among the old nuns, many of whom were retired teachers from St. Alphonsus School who remembered Deirdre, quickly verified that it was Carlotta's attending physician, Dr. Gallagher, who visited Deirdre and ascertained that yes, she was going to have a child.

  "Now, this girl is going to be married," he told the sisters. "And I don't want anything mean being said. The father is a college professor from Denton, Texas, and he is on his way to New Orleans now."

  By the time Deirdre was taken by ambulance to First Street three weeks later, heavily sedated and with a registered nurse in attendance, the gossip was all over the Redemptorist Parish that she was pregnant and soon to be married, and that her husband, the college professor, was "a married man."

  Quite the scandal it was to those who had watched the family for generations. Old ladies whispered about it on the church steps. Deirdre Mayfair and a married man! People glanced furtively at Miss Millie and Miss Belle as they passed. Some said that Carlotta would have no part of it. But then Miss Belle and Miss Millie took Deirdre with them to Gus Mayer and there they bought her a lovely blue dress and blue satin shoes for the wedding, and a new white purse and hat.

  "She was so drugged, I don't think she knew where she was," said one of the salesgirls. "Miss Millie made all the choices for her. She just sat there, white as a sheet, and saying 'Yes, Aunt Millie,' in a slurred voice."

  Juliette Milton could not resist writing to us. We received a long letter from her detailing how Beatrice Mayfair had been to First Street to see Deirdre and brought her a whole shopping bag of gifts. "Why ever did she go home to that house, instead of Cortland's!" wrote Juliette.

  There is some indication that Deirdre had little choice in the matter. Medical science in those days believed the placenta of the baby protected it from drugs injected into the mother. And nurses said that Deirdre was so heavily drugged when she left the hospital that she did not even know what was happening to her. Carlotta had come in the early afternoon on a weekday and obtained her release.

  "Now, Cortland Mayfair came looking for her that very evening," Sister Bridget Marie told me later in strictest confidence. "And was he ever fit to be tied when he discovered that child was gone!"

  Legal gossip deepened the mystery. Cortland and Carlotta were screaming at each other over the phone behind the office doors. Cortland told his secretary in a rage that Carlotta thought she could keep him out of the house where he was born. Well, she was out of her mind, if she thought so!

  Years later, Ryan M
ayfair talked about it. "They said my grandfather was simply locked out. He went up to First Street and Carlotta met him at the gate and threatened him. She said, 'You come in here and I'll call the police.' "

  On the first of July, another volley of information rocked the parish gossips. Deirdre's future husband, the "college professor" who was leaving his wife to marry her, had been killed driving to New Orleans on the river road. His car had suffered a broken tie rod and veered to the right at great speed, striking an oak tree, whereupon it exploded into flames. Deirdre Mayfair, unmarried and not yet eighteen, was going to be giving up her baby. It was to be a family adoption, and Miss Carlotta was arranging the whole thing.

  "My grandfather was outraged when he heard about the adoption," said Ryan Mayfair many years later. "He wanted to talk to Deirdre, hear it from her own lips that she wanted to give up this child. But he still couldn't get in the house on First Street. Finally he went to Father Lafferty, the parish priest, but Carlotta had him in her pocket. The priest was squarely on Carlotta's side."

  All this sounds extremely tragic. It sounds as if Deirdre almost escaped the curse of First Street, if only the father of her baby, driving from Texas to marry her, had not died. For years this sad scandalous story has been repeated throughout the Redemptorist Parish. It was repeated to me as late as 1988 by Rita Mae Lonigan. There is every indication that Father Lafferty believed the story of the Texas father of the baby. And countless reports indicate that the Mayfair cousins believed it. Beatrice Mayfair believed it. Pierce Mayfair believed it. Even Rhonda Mayfair and her husband, Ellis Clement, in Denton, Texas, seemed to have believed it, or at least the vague version which they were eventually told.

  But the story wasn't true.

  Almost from the beginning, our investigators shook their heads in puzzlement. College professor with Deirdre Mayfair? Who? Constant surveillance ruled out completely the possibility of Rhonda Mayfair's husband, Ellis Clement. He scarcely knew Deirdre.

  Indeed, there never was any such man in Denton, Texas, who dated Deirdre Mayfair, or was ever observed by anyone in her company. And there was no college professor employed at that university or any other school in the vicinity who died in a car crash on the Louisiana river road. Indeed, no one died in such a crash on the river road in 1959, as far as we know.